1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates a cooling technology for electronic products, and, more particularly, to a complex signal processing system and related method for controlling multiple fans.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the rapid pace of improvements in semiconductor technologies, the number of transistors in a single integrated circuit (IC) has increased dramatically, and the execution speeds of integrated circuits have also seen dramatic increases. As a result, it has become very important to improve the cooling capabilities for these integrated circuits.
FIG. 1 is a schematic drawing of a fan control module in the prior art. The hardware monitor 110 uses TACH pins 1˜4 to receive and process fan speed signals (tachometer signals). The hardware monitor 110 has specific fan control pins for sending pulse width modulation (PWM) signals to control the speed of the fans. However, the number of pins available for the hardware monitor 110 is limited, and when there are more fans, more hardware monitors are required. When the pins for the hardware monitor 110 are insufficient, even the addition of a single fan requires the addition of another hardware monitor. As shown in FIG. 1, hardware monitors 110, 120 each have four pairs of fan control pins; the fans 131, 132, 133, 134 are controlled by the hardware monitor 110, and a single fan 135 is controlled by the hardware monitor 120. Therefore, under this configuration, the additional hardware monitor 120 occupies space on the motherboard with extra fan control pins unused.
It is therefore desirable to provide a complex signal processing system and related method for controlling multiple fans to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.